China's Huawei Touts 'World's Fastest Smartphone'

BARCELONA: Chinese telecoms giant Huawei on Sunday launched what it touted as the " world's fastest smartphone", in its bid to squeeze into a market currently dominated by Apple and Samsung.

BARCELONA: Chinese telecoms giant Huawei on Sunday launched what it touted as the " world's fastest smartphone", in its bid to squeeze into a market currently dominated by Apple and Samsung.

"We are proud to ... introduce a world first at the 2012 Mobile World Congress with the Ascend D quad, the fastest smartphone," said Richard Yu, Huawei Device chairman, on the eve of the industry's biggest fair in Barcelona.

The phone, which will be available from April, boasts a quad core processor, double that of smartphones which are using dual core at the moment, making them at least twice as rapid.

"We've listened to people's top demands from smartphones: speed, long battery life, high quality visual and audio capabilities and a compact lightweight handset," said Yu, saying that the phone meets these requirements.

The phone's battery, for instance, lasts some 30 percent longer than the industry average, it said.

It also comes with a technology cancelling out background noise on voicecalls and boasts a surround sound system, said the group.

Huawei was unable to give a retail price for the phone but Yu said it would be "15 percent more competitive than others of the same class".

Other vendors, including Finnish giant Nokia, are expected to roll out this year's offerings during the fair, which gathers thousands of executives from the industry this year.

Huawei, founded over two decades ago by former People's Liberation Army engineer Ren Zhengfei, is at the forefront of efforts by Chinese firms to shift from being the world's workshop to becoming creators of genuine global brands.